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Georgiana at Althorp: Spencer Family Portraits 1755-1783

This essay represents the first scholarly account of a key period in the formation of a celebrated British private art collection, that of the Spencers at Althorp, and provides new insights into famous paintings in the collection by artists such as Reynolds and Gainsborough. It also offers the first detailed analysis of portraits of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by a range of artists, challenging and enriching the current emphasis on Georgiana as an early representative of modern celebrity culture by showing that how image was shaped by the political ambitions and dynastic interests of the family of her birth, above all those of her mother.

The volume of which this essay forms part makes a contribution to the study of eighteenth-century British portraiture by shifting the emphasis from the public art exhibition to the country house as the social and material context for the production and reception of such works. As such, the essay will be of wide interest to art historians and historians of visual culture. It also makes a significant contribution to British social and cultural history by arguing that the Spencer family portraits exemplify attempts on the part of the Whig aristocracy to develop a new moral justification for their political and economic power.

This essay is based on extensive archival and field work and is extensively footnoted. It draws on the Spencer papers on deposit in the British Library, including several unpublished letters that provide new evidence about the portraits and their sitters. It also includes a close study of portraits still at Althorp House, Northamptonshire, and offers a systematic analysis of them as a group. Use is also made of contemporary correspondence and a wide range of other primary sources. It also engages substantively with the relevant secondary literature, both art-historical and historical.